


nothing gold can stay

by reap (nightbrights)



Category: iKON (Kpop)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Shotgunning, Smoking, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, boatloads of it lmao, but not really gansters bc they're just a bunch of sad kids, overall misery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 19:39:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6672946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbrights/pseuds/reap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And yeah, maybe he’s just a giant convolution of bruised knuckles and recklessness and cheeky smiles and teeth, but nobody comes to Hanbin as more familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing gold can stay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jongins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jongins/gifts).



> this was written for exchangekon for my dear michelle, whom has my entire heart, and was the reason for the craters beneath my eyes and buckets, and buckets of tears. but that's okay, because it was all worth it;; you're forever the worst, and i love you.
> 
> this entire fic is a giant mess and a rushed, unsolicited monster of feelings. many apologies;; it's been edited so there's less errors and it isn't as messy as the original post, but overall, nothing besides that has been changed. u_____u if y'all can overlook the ridiculous amount of profanity, that'd be amazing lmao. all of this was written to the internet's get away and sza's child's play on eternal loop, and the title was taken from robert frost. i'm sorry for all the emotions, once again.
> 
> this is a one way trip straight to hell, oops.
> 
> crossposted to [lj](http://toxigenesis.livejournal.com/3172.html)

People are full of contradictions. 

Hanbin’s seen and heard it all endlessly, over and over like a broken record, a song stuck on repeat. That’s what all of them are like—every last one punch-drunk with all that bullshit conviction Hanbin’s only ever seen in movies. Their hands raised in the air as they shout a stream of promises that have no meaning, their voices with a desperate ring like a last minute prayer to the heavens.

They’re promises they’ll never live up to, promises they’ll never fulfill because humans are flawed and the world is an ugly, unfair place. He’s grown to accept it.

Hanbin has nothing to be hopeful for, not anymore.

 

 

Downtown Seoul consists of every kind of youth, every blend of naivety and obliviousness. The city rings with noise pollution and cigarettes sit vicariously between perfectly manicured fingers, smoke twirling into the icy, glassy sky. Young blood, fresh and reckless. _Kim Hanbin_ , with bones bruised into an ugly convolution of blue and purple, metro lines mapped out on his palms and neon signs burning words into the back of his mind.

Hanbin wanders in the heart of the city, in the eye of the storm, the roads splitting away in each direction like veins. He digs his fists into the pockets of his jacket and sighs out of annoyance because he can’t walk as quickly as he’d like. It’s not easy to slip by when so many bodies course so slowly through the streets like blood.

People are fatally simple to understand. They like to be entertained, and no pair of eyes will ever truly give you their attention without a show. Hanbin knows this better than anyone else, knows that he’s being watched but never scrutinized. Everyone roaming the street is a carbon copy of the next. Same clothes, same dullness in their eyes, same jaded visage. Nobody _really_ cares about you, but that makes it easier.

Hanbin pulls his hood off once he’s out of sight and sneaks away into an alley of their old, unremarkable building, climbing the fire escape with rusted steel steps that stain the white of his shoes. He hops through the half-opened window, slinging his backpack off his shoulder and onto the battered armchair.

“You got ‘em?” Junhwe stands at the doorway of the room, hair mussed and sweats hanging low on his hips.

Hanbin nods, pulling out a ziploc from a pocket with a zip to show him. He tosses them onto the coffee table and gives Junhwe a once-over, smells the sex on him and says, “You look freshly fucked.”

“Just got off from the job,” he replies, gives Hanbin a smile like he stated something so blatantly obvious. He pulls a shirt over his head and it seems uncomfortable when it clings to his sweat-slicked skin. 

Hanbin rummages through his things and grabs a small orange bottle. “This early?”

Junhwe shrugs and reasons, “I can’t be slacking off, you know.” Hanbin pours a few pills into his palm and swallows them dry. Hanbin hears Junhwe scoff when he stuffs his pills back into a pocket.

“You’re getting high?” Junhwe gives him a cheeky look and mimics him, “This early?”

“Oh, fuck off. You know that’s not it,” Hanbin says and sticks his tongue out. Junhwe laughs at him and he’s given the finger.

“Not a druggie but sells drugs?” Junhwe still teases, but he knows just as well as any of them that Hanbin only lets them smoke a joint or two, never anything beyond that. Jinhwan also watches over them, scolds them before they can even think of getting hooked on something.

“I need all the money I can get,” Hanbin justifies, because there’s not much else he can do to support the seven of them. “Your client left already, right?”

“Yeah, they usually leave right away. None of them can stand to hang around a whore like me, funny.” Hanbin frowns at Junhwe’s words, too self-deprecating to be coming from him mouth, but he settles on staying quiet. Hanbin wishes it wasn’t like this, the situation that they’re in.

“Where’s Bobby? Is he still here?” Hanbin asks as he stands up, dusting off his jeans before fixing his tousled hair in the mirror of the bathroom. His eyes seem placid, pensive almost. His bags seem darker under the dim halogen bulbs and his vision lags with exhaustion.

“Nope, he’s not. I’m not sure where he is, actually,” Junhwe tells him.

Chanwoo pipes in as he walks past the doorway, “He went to the roof with Jinhwan.”

“You three are always up there,” Junhwe points out as he rubs the sweat on his forehead with the hem of his shirt. Hanbin shrugs and agrees. “Is it some sacred place?”

“It’s just comforting, and it feels kinda liberating, taking in the fresh air,” Hanbin says, stuffing a hand in his pocket and grabbing his keys before he leaves.

 

 

Hanbin leans his head against the window of the car, fingers tapping against the screen of his phone in staccato rhythm. The city blurs all around them through the glass, into a swirl of comfort and placidity. It’s strange, the silence.

Each tiny gleam of light flickers like a flurry of signals and colors as they pass, too difficult to decipher in the haze clouding around his eyes, his head, his thoughts. There’s an unusual sense of calm in Bobby’s presence when he’s quiet, Hanbin finds, warm and comforting beside him in the chill of winter. Not a word is spoken when he watches the serrated skyline fizz into darkness. The heater doesn’t seem to work too well.

“Did you say something?” he asks when he thinks he hears a voice, but there’s not a sound in response.

He looks over and Bobby who sleeps on the window opposite of him, head rested against the glass in uncharacteristic silence. He seems oddly serene, easier on the eyes, and it’s the most unorthodox thing because everything about Bobby screams loud and everything about Hanbin screams quiet.

“It’s not polite to stare,” he rasps when he opens a single eye and Hanbin turns away instantly. There’s a small yet bright laugh and he shrinks a bit in his seat. So he wasn’t sleeping.

“Who said I was staring?” 

“What else is there worth looking at?” he replies, cheeky, and Hanbin scoffs. He’d reach over to shove Bobby in the arm if he weren’t so tired.

“Get over yourself,” Hanbin laughs and tries to brush it off, tries to blink away the weariness of his eyes. He yawns and tips his head back to face the ceiling of the car, but still glances at Bobby from the corner of his eye. They share the lengthiest moment of silence, one that he can appreciate.

He almost dozes off until Bobby points out, “Stress doesn't look good on you.”

“Does it look good on anyone?” Hanbin replies, and he hates how abrasive the rough sandpaper of his throat sounds. Bobby’s face is blurry in the dark but he still makes Hanbin’s lungs feel impossibly heavy in his chest.

“I guess not,” Bobby agrees. “But you look miserable as fuck.”

“I am miserable as fuck.” And for a moment, Bobby doesn’t have anything to say.

He knits his brows together in thought, maybe at a loss. But Bobby always still pulls through and reasons, with all of his bullshit positivity that stands as steady as ever, “But it doesn’t have to be that way, you know? The faster you accept how shitty the world is, the less miserable you’ll have to be.”

“It’s not that simple,” Hanbin says and lets out a little laugh—one that he can’t really place, one that lets all of the bitterness he keeps to himself slip through. He closes his eyes for the briefest moment and the world slows all around them, almost as if time had terminated, and Hanbin’s glad the driver hasn’t said a thing to either of them.

“You’re too cynical,” Bobby nags in the kind of tone that Hanbin registers as annoyance. If he could, he’d kick his ass for that one, because Bobby’s the last person he wants to be chided by. But Hanbin’s fucking _exhausted_ and the world will still turn regardless, so he lets him be.

“Shut up,” Hanbin complains, words lagging with fatigue. “I’ve earned the right to be an ass.”

He turns and Bobby’s smiling at him, running a hand through his hair, and it almost seems like he’s the only thing still in motion in the hush of the dormant city. He insists with a cheerfulness in his voice, “The world isn’t that bad of a place.”

“Yeah, if you squint,” Hanbin retorts. “Really fucking hard.”

“No,” Bobby disagrees, and for a split second he seems almost sullen. “If you open your eyes.”

 

 

“You got into a fight again,” Hanbin points out, eyes somber and mind clouded and muddled with alcohol. Sure, he’s a bit drunk, but he still frowns and opens his mouth to nag when he sees the scrape on Bobby’s forearm. Hanbin leans back against the balcony railing, taking a drag of his cigarette and letting the smoke drift between the two of them. It clouds in front of Bobby like fog, who winces when Hanbin blows it all into his face.

“Not recently,” he responds and pulls out a cigarette of his own, leaning in to light it against Hanbin’s. “You just never notice.”

“You’re a hundred years too young to lie to me,” Hanbin says and laughs when Bobby gives him an almost comical sigh in response. He sloshes the drink around in his hand and reaches and grabs Bobby’s arm, moving to run his thumb over his knuckles, bruised and broken to the point no amount of time could ever seem to heal. How many hits his bones can take isn’t something he can really help, though, so Hanbin cuts him some slack. “Do they hurt?” he asks.

“Not really, no,” he tells him, and he puts up a strong front until Hanbin presses against a bruise particularly hard and he flinches. Hanbin gives him the most patronizing look he can muster, _I told you so_ in the ocean of wordlessness and noise pollution.

Bobby’s in an awful mood for once, has nothing to say so Hanbin talks instead, lectures him, but it’s a lost cause because Bobby still never listens. “Stop being so goddamn reckless.”

“Funny,” Bobby scoffs and turns to face the city. It’s almost cinematic seeing him—his silhouette, really—pressed up against all the lights. He chimes, annoyingly sarcastic, “Because people just change so easily, right Hanbin?.”

“Just quit getting into so many damn fights,” Hanbin chides, clicking his tongue. Everything’s hazy but Bobby looks softer, younger even, without all the harsh edges. “You look like a kicked puppy.”

“You act like you don’t do any dumb shit,” Bobby retorts, and Hanbin’s drunk but he’s not dumb, so he hears the smugness in Bobby’s voice. He laughs.

“Not like you, at least. Beating people up doesn’t get you anywhere.”

“And you barely gain enough to sustain all seven of us,” he quips, and Hanbin almost takes offense. “Yet you still insist on carrying most of the burden all by yourself, am I right?”

“I’ve got no other choice, though. That’s the difference,” Hanbin counters, and yeah, maybe he’s right, but at least Hanbin tries. “And I’m not the only one working my ass off, am I? Jinhwan would be sad if he heard that.”

“You sure don’t act like it, though. You give me shit for throwing a few punches here and there but you’re living the absolute most mundane life.” Hanbin blanches, disenchanted, because the last person he wants to hear this shit from is Bobby.

“Wow, Kim Jiwon, the beacon of positivity, telling me shit about life,” Hanbin deadpans, and honestly, he’s grown sick of this conversation. “Why suddenly so negative?”

“Who do you think I got it from, hm?” he prods, takes it in stride, and Hanbin jabs him in the rib for it. The sad thing about it is that he’s right. Hanbin’s cynical as fuck, wearing his misery like a second skin. He’s become quite accepting of it.

Hanbin has too much pride to take it though, and he’s not quite drunk enough to let Bobby get the last laugh, so he still tries to tell him off. “Oh, shut the fuck up. Being an asshole doesn’t suit you,” he dismisses, and Bobby gives him a smile like he’s won.

“You’re full of contradictions, Hanbin.”

“How so?” Hanbin asks as if he didn’t already know, as if that didn’t apply to everyone. Maybe it’s something worth listening to. “Explain it to me then.”

“Look at you right now,” he starts, his voice rougher than it was before. For a split second, he looks almost dejected, as if talking about it made him so. There’s a smile that Hanbin thinks is displaced. “You drink so much in one night, but then smoke to sober up afterwards. Don’t you think that defeats the purpose of drinking in the first place?”

Hanbin’s response is immediate. “All things come to an end, Kim Jiwon.”

But then Bobby laughs, he fucking _grins_ all across like it’s the funniest shit he’s ever heard, and fuck, it pisses Hanbin off beyond belief. He replies, complacent, “Not all things, Kim Hanbin.”

“There it is, the bullshit positivity,” Hanbin says, exasperated, and he wonders what’s so goddamn funny. “You’re as naive as ever.”

Bobby keeps laughing.

 

 

It gets lonely on nights like this, on nights when the silence is so thick and deafening that Hanbin can’t manage to sleep. He slips out of his bed and into Bobby’s, nestling up to him under the ripples of makeshift blankets. The smell of him is alleviating, reassuring.

Hanbin presses himself against the warmth of Bobby’s back, smoothing his hands against the glide of skin and muscle, against scars and ink. Hanbin counts his vertebrae, dips his fingers into the hollow alignment of his spine as if he were tracing the loose seams of a worn, familiar shirt. His ears tune themselves to the sound of Bobby’s breathing.

Hanbin grabs him by the arm and tries to shake him awake because maybe he’s feeling a little needy. Bobby hums and shifts around to face him, taking it as his cue. Every bone in his body lax when he climbs on top of Hanbin, his movements downtempo and Hanbin dies a little at the anticipation.

Bobby smiles, pulling at his hair as he kisses away the disquiet. The whimper Hanbin lets slip dies quick and breathlessly against Bobby’s lips, hands roaming a little further and skin flushing a little deeper. He’s got his chain dangling low against Hanbin’s skin and a hand fisted in the collar of his shirt. Everything is dead still to the ears except for the clink of gold that rings and permeates through the air like the clear chime of a bell.

“Yeah?” Bobby mouths against his lips, slow and placating almost, as if he were spelling it out for Hanbin to digest. He’s not quite in the mood to talk so he thinks it’s all enough. It’s one word with a thousand different meanings.

“Yeah,” Hanbin mirrors him, breathlessly, and it catches fire.

On nights like this, Bobby likes to fuck Hanbin nice and thorough into the mattress, ass splayed and cock heavy between his legs, deconstructs him limb by limb, rivet by rivet. The cheap linens are rough but Hanbin clings to them all the same, burying his face into the sheets as he bites back a moan. Bobby runs his hands along the taper of Hanbin’s hips, digs fingernails into flesh and leaves streaks, harsh and red, like skid marks on his skin.

“You’re quieter than usual,” Bobby points out when a thrust goes particularly deep, skin slapping against skin, speeding up with each hitch of Hanbin’s breath, and fuck he’s so _close_.

“You’re gentler than usual,” Hanbin responds with mock composure. Bobby’s fingers are cold but his touch is warm, slowing his hips and smoothing his palms along Hanbin’s thighs. Hanbin arches his ass against him, desperate to get off, desperate for _more_ but now Bobby’s taking it too easy. 

“Something on your mind?” Bobby asks, and Hanbin twists his body around to face him, gives him a look.

“Is this really the time for a question like that?” Hanbin is disapproving, but Bobby lets out a small, breathy laugh that registers bright and familiar in Hanbin’s ears.

“My bad,” Bobby says, smiling as he flips Hanbin over onto his back and kisses down the slope of his nose, his cheek, the line of his jaw. He doesn't move, his hips stopped completely. Hanbin sits impatient with his cock leaking precum on his stomach. “Then let’s take it slow, yeah?"

He grabs Bobby by the back of his neck, pulling him closer and giving him a light pat on the cheek. He murmurs, “You’re starting to bore me.”

“Oh, am I?” He takes it as a challenge, giving Hanbin’s ass a hard slap. There’s something mischievous about his voice, almost patronizing, and it’s the kind of tone Hanbin hates answering to because it makes him feel small.

So Hanbin settles on wracking his nails down Bobby’s back instead, trying to egg him on further when he complies for a split second and thrusts so hard, Hanbin slips and veers against the sheets and thumps against the headboard. 

But then he completely stops, and Hanbin’s getting pissed.

Hanbin tries to move his hips, head against cold wood, setting a faster pace because Bobby’s full of shit and won’t let him get off, but it’s awkward and his cock isn’t angled at Hanbin’s prostate in the way that he likes. He struggles and fuck—Bobby _giggles at him_ , the snarkiest little laugh Hanbin thinks he’s ever heard, and he wants to smack Bobby upside the head and tell him how much he hates him.

Bobby repositions them, leaning over and caging Hanbin in his arms. There’s a beat of stillness when their foreheads touch, dragging into seconds, minutes, hours. Time feels longer when stretched thin, each breath slow and bated, and there’s not much either of them can say to slice through the silence.

Bobby’s hair falls into Hanbin’s eyes and somehow he seems much softer up close, unnaturally so, because from afar he’s just skin and muscle and a whole lot of intimidation. If Hanbin were to pull a gun out, would it still be the same?

 _But it’s you_ , Hanbin thinks he’d say.

The way Bobby’s holds Hanbin—fingers stroking his face as if he were something fragile, something so easily broken—is almost endearing. But Hanbin’s not small, not fragile, not the diminutive boy he used to be. Not like this, not ever.

Bobby leans in closer, kissing him easy and languid like there’s nothing they have to lose to time. There’s words catch and linger—a few that neither of them voice, suspended midair between them as if strung up with rope. They’re words that Hanbin hates because he doesn’t quite know how to form an answer.

_So what now?_

Hanbin does manage it, though, loaded with gunpowder on his tongue. He swallows all of his pride and wraps his arms around Bobby’s neck, pulling him impossibly closer. “Why don’t you,” he starts with a venomous lilt to his voice, before tearing apart any ounce of restraint Bobby had left, “actually fuck me like you mean it, yeah?”

 

 

“You two are a strange pair,” Jinhwan points out one day as he takes a sip of his coffee, the coarse golden blond of his hair glinting with dyed artificiality. There’s the usual softness in his eyes, lashes light and smile sweet, and a strange sense of lethargy that doesn’t catch on him often.

Hanbin tips his head back to face the ceiling, letting smoke twirl above him. “Is that so?” he says in between exhales. Bobby sits with his head slotted against Hanbin’s shoulder.

“You’re different from each other. Not the two types to seem to get along,” Jinhwan explains and smiles. “But it works, somehow. Like two mismatching halves of the same whole.”

“Mismatching? Like socks?” Bobby giggles with the classic punch-drunk toothy grin he always pulls. Hanbin gives Jinhwan a skeptical look, but still smiles.

“I suppose it’s like,” Jinhwan begins, knitting his brows together in thought, and clarifies, “having a pair of socks of the same color but a different pattern. The same but also not.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be old and wise, Jinhwan?” Hanbin quips and Jinhwan pouts in a way that makes him seem younger than his years. Hanbin laughs lightheartedly. “Didn’t know childish analogies were your thing.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Jinhwan retorts, his voice still mild, but Hanbin’s hardly paying attention anymore when Bobby stirs against his side and absently runs a hand along his thigh. “But you two are weird. You’re really tied to each other.”

“Tied to each other, huh? Maybe that’s what it is,” Hanbin mumbles, words almost lost in the whir of air conditioning and the hustle of the city outside their thin walls. It’s awfully serene.

“Maybe it’s what?” And that’s almost lost too.

Hanbin doesn’t answer.

 

 

Yunhyeong is the only one who hates the taste of cigarettes. _You’re inhaling cancer into your lungs_ , he always preaches, the same soapbox speech he gives Hanbin over and over. He tells him he doesn’t care.

“This shit yellows your teeth,” he says, plucking the cigarette from Hanbin’s fingers, waving it around before it’s snatched back. “And it can kill you.”

“And since when did that matter? I won’t live long enough for it to show on my teeth anyway,” Hanbin counters and laughs, haughty, perhaps a bit bitterly. Yunhyeong’s always been perceptive and he notices his tone. “That’s some shit only you would say.” 

“It’s unhealthy,” Yunhyeong responds, almost as if there was genuine worry in his voice. “I’d rather not smoke myself to death. That’s an unappealing way to die.”

“Those guns of yours aren’t too pretty,” Hanbin retorts.

“They’re only as ugly as the wielder,” Yunhyeong preaches, waving the revolver in his hand as if he weren’t in broad daylight. It glints in the light in icy cold silver, shiny and malignant. Yunhyeong still seems to find pride in it. “You know, everything’s not so harsh with a bit of glitter.”

“Our very own hitman, Song Yunhyeong, being philosophical?” Hanbin watches as his face scrunches up as if he said something distasteful, but there’s truth underneath the sarcasm. That’s how everything is with Hanbin.

“Don’t call me that,” he says, a little meekly compared to usual, but his voice is warm and light. He stuffs the gun back into his backpack like it’s no big deal, but he never seems to keep it loaded.

“Then what else would you be?” Yunhyeong doesn’t even take a moment to think about it.

“I don’t kill,” he answers, not completely answering the question, and gives Hanbin a wink and a corny smile. “Because you know, I’m classy like that.”

“I’m not smoking to be classy, Yunhyeong,” Hanbin replies in response to the jab Yunhyeong gives him. He lets the white twirl from his lips into the polluted skyline. “I smoke because it’s calming, and I don’t have much of a reason to live that long anyway.”

“You have Bobby, don’t you?” Yunhyeong asks, and something in Hanbin stirs. “Everybody has somebody to live for.”

“Everyone has somebody to die for, you mean,” Hanbin twists the words around. It’s negative but he thinks it’s better, thinks there’s more truth in it. Yunhyeong looks at him as if he said something strange. Maybe it’s because he knows Hanbin never gives without taking, but maybe it’s because it’s Bobby.

Yunhyeong scoffs, carding his fingers through his hair, shocks of freshly dyed gunmetal silver. His voice is breathy, barely audible when he says, “You sound so miserable.”

“But so are you, aren’t you?” Hanbin takes one last drag from his cigarette before crushing it under his heel. “Takes one to know one.”

Yunhyeong fakes a smile. “No, not really,” he answers, and lies somehow sound prettier when they come from his mouth, so maybe that’s why Hanbin’s almost convinced. Almost.

 

 

_People are full of contradictions, aren’t they?_

 

 

There’s something ominous about the silence tonight, something that crawls and nestles beneath his skin, eats away at him steadily like a parasite latched onto his flesh. Tonight, the rain doesn't really feel like rain, like the reality before him isn’t genuine, and words seem to filter too mechanically through teeth to be the truth. Hanbin tries to sleep but can’t help but feel apprehensive, his stomach twisting into a knot of unease that he can’t ignore by closing his eyes.

“Can’t sleep either?” Bobby asks him in the dark. It startles him but Hanbin calms himself to the sound of Bobby’s breathing. The moonlight shines soft and languid through the window, easy on his eyes.

“Nope,” he murmurs and rolls around in his sheets. “I don’t need this anxiety shit at 3AM.”

“Don’t stress, you’re not the only one,” Bobby assures him. Hanbin tries his absolute hardest to sleep before phone lights up, the ringing filling the quiet, loud and immense in the dark. Hanbin answers the call and his stomach drops before Junhwe can even utter a sound from the other side.

“Hanbin, get your ass to the alleyway, you know the one,” Junhwe almost shouts, distress ripping through Hanbin’s ears.

“Why, what happened?” he asks, trying to make sense of the situation. Bobby sits up in his bed, itching the back of his head, dazed and bewildered.

“Just—fuck, you’ll find out once you get here,” Junhwe’s voice is frantic, and Hanbin feels even more nauseous. “Drag Bobby here with you or something, but make sure Donghyuk doesn’t come okay?”

“How come, why can’t he—” Junhwe hangs up before Hanbin can finish asking.

 

 

He realizes why soon enough, and there’s the loudest ringing in his ears, the rain too harsh for him to hear anything else. The taste of vomit wells in his mouth and he fights to swallow it down. None of them say a thing for several minutes.

Yunhyeong is dead, Hanbin registers, and the body in the rain screams louder in his face than any pair of lungs could manage to voice, any bold neon sign in the dark.

“What the—fuck, what the hell happened?” Bobby asks, and Junhwe’s got his lips pressed into a tight, solemn line. Hanbin’s mouth tastes like smoke and bile and horror. He’s absolutely speechless.

“When I was walking home—” Junhwe’s voice almost breaks, doesn’t manage to finish any sentence he starts. “He was, I just.”

“I’m not even surprised,” is the first thing Hanbin manages to say, and he can’t tell the difference between the blood and the rainwater, coursing away into the gutter, through the veins of the city.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

There’s a thousand different emotions that run through Hanbin’s mind, a thousand different things he wants to say, wants to ask. There’s regret and there’s lament and there’s—relief, somehow. 

_People are full of contradictions, aren’t they?_

Hanbin forms an answer, eventually, after piecing himself together, and he holds for just a moment. Maybe he sounds out of his goddamn mind, but he gets it. Hanbin understands. 

“He wanted this.”

 

 

Life fucking sucks—they’ve all come to realize in the coming days, where nights are sleepless and dark circles set into the skin deeper than any sinkhole. Hanbin’s known this for the longest time, laments it with his entirety, but never got the chance to see the worst in full for himself.

“Hey Hanbin, you doing alright?” Bobby asks him, leaning against the doorframe. Hanbin turns to face him, and somehow, even when he looks at Bobby, he feels guilt gnawing at his insides.

Hanbin really isn’t in the mood for questions, but Bobby seems worried out of his mind, so he still responds, “Why do you ask?”

“You’ve been out of it lately,” Bobby says, and honestly, that answer kind of reasoning pisses Hanbin off.

“No kidding,” Hanbin replies with no bite. Hanbin’s eyes flit around the room, at Bobby and the white walls that enclose them, and he can feel nausea and fear rising to the brim of his throat, chewing at him with serrated teeth.

“I don’t know, with Yunhyeong and all,” Bobby clarifies, and his concern’s almost cute, endearing. “Donghyuk’s not dealing with it too well, but I just wanted to see how you’re holding up. I mean, all of us are having a rough time, but you two—”

“I’ll be fine,” Hanbin assures him. He smiles, complexion so tired and worn like an old shirt that’s gone through the wash a countless amount of times, fraying at the edges.

Bobby takes it. He shuts his eyes for a split second and nods. “Okay, whatever you say.”

 

 

Bobby gives him his space, doesn’t question it when Hanbin’s locked up in his room for weeks, or when he leaves home in the middle of the night to a place he doesn’t disclose. But the thing is, Hanbin’s not fine. Not the tiniest bit so, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be. Not after this.

He’s got his arm slung over Jinhwan’s narrow shoulders when he’s dragged back to their flat. Bobby’s hazy in the dimness of the room but Hanbin doesn’t miss the distraught look in his eyes.

“He’s drunk out of his fucking mind,” Jinhwan says when he sits him down on the couch. Jinhwan’s always had a mild temperament, voice always gentle and controlled, but there’s something uncharacteristically stern about it for once. Hanbin groans when he’s slumped down on his side, dizzy.

“Are you fucking serious, Kim Hanbin, you fucking—” Bobby’s frustrated for once, and if Hanbin were more conscious of his surroundings, he’d probably laugh. “And you have the audacity to lecture me.”

“We should keep a watch on him,” Jinhwan says, and laughs softly. “Never thought I’d ever say that.”

Bobby frowns and Jinhwan mouths a _sorry_. Things have swapped, somehow. He groans and kneels down next to Hanbin, uneasiness seeping through his pores. Hanbin detects the alarm in his voice when he says, “What’s gotten into you?”

“Fucking everything,” Hanbin grumbles, his thoughts still swift. “Everything’s gotten into me.”

“It’s four in the fucking morning,” Bobby stresses and Hanbin barely cracks his eyes open to get a look at him. Bobby’s never this uneasy. How cute.

Hanbin smiles before his vision fades out.

 

 

Hangovers are the fucking devil, Hanbin’s decided, as he rolls around on the rough carpeting and thumps against the leg of the table. The room seems boxier than he remembers, the walls too low and the windows too small. There’s the scent of coffee brewing, the mechanical churning filling the morning silence.

Hanbin sits himself up on the ground, dizzy and disoriented, stumbling when he tries to stand up to walk into the kitchen. His eyes have crusted up and his shirt reeks of vodka and vomit.

Donghyuk’s sitting at the table with two hands around his mug and a solemn look to his eyes. The light glints bright on the copper of his hair. “Dude, you smell like shit.”

“That’s not something you should say first thing to someone. Especially when they’re older than you,” Hanbin mock-chides him, but Donghyuk doesn’t even laugh, doesn’t seem to have the energy to.

“You don’t call anyone older than you hyung,” he drawls, his voice meek and raspy as if it was hard for him to breathe, his movements slow and lethargic as if he were wearing his skin backwards.

“Yeah, because I’m an ass like that.” Hanbin laughs bitterly, sitting down in the seat across from Donghyuk, and adds on, “And I don’t do anything right.”

“That makes the two of us.” Hanbin rolls his eyes at the typical answer.

Donghyuk sees but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t seem to be in the mood for conversation, but despite that, Hanbin asks, “Still caught up over Yunhyeong?”

“Still?” Donghyuk questions, and Hanbin supposes it’s hypocritical coming from him. Every time Hanbin glances at him, something stings like condemnation, but maybe that’s just his imagination.

He changes the topic, but doesn’t catch himself before he says, “You have eyes like a wounded animal.”

Donghyuk’s taken aback, his face contorting into something in confusion, maybe reproach. The muscles in his face relax when he says, “So do you.”

“You know where Jinhwan is? I think threw up all over his jacket,” Hanbin drops it, not bettering the conversation, but he doesn’t care that much. Donghyuk pulls a face.

“Jinhwan-hyung left earlier. In fact, most of us left already,” he explains. Hanbin gets a better look at his expression when he sits straight up. There’s tragedy written all over him, anguish in his eyes and voice as if he’s lost with nowhere to belong. God, it makes Hanbin feel awful. “But he should be at work like the good mother that he is.”

“You gonna be okay?” Hanbin asks him as he’s about to leave. Donghyuk seems so pitiful when sitting by himself, and Hanbin’s not that huge of an ass to leave him without asking.

“Are you?” Donghyuk asks right back and Hanbin expects it.

“I asked you first,” Hanbin says, voice mild, and Donghyuk shrugs. The thought eats up both of their time, but Hanbin cuts him some slack because maybe it’s not the easiest question to answer.

He responds, more than just a few beats too slow. “I don’t know.”

“Me neither,” Hanbin replies, before stepping out the door and locking it behind him.

 

 

Jumping is an awfully unappealing way to die, Hanbin realizes when he reaches the top.

He doesn’t quite know what he’s doing when he pushes open the heavy steel door to the rooftop, doesn’t know what he’s quite looking for when tries to blink past the weight of his eyes and peers his head over the edge.

A lot of things can be prevented. Hanbin’s failed Yunhyeong and now even himself.

 _What’s the point?_ he thinks. Maybe this is how Yunhyeong felt.

This high up, it seems like Hanbin could graze the sky with his fingertips, the oxygen too thin for his lungs breathe easy. His skin warms under the lethargic light of the sun but the wind’s a bit chilly for midsummer. Hanbin pulls the collar of his sweatshirt over his face and drowns himself into the fabric. It’s soft, and he thinks of Bobby, because he’s soft too and—

Anxiety bubbles in his stomach again, but it’s fine. He’s made up his mind.

The morning is lazy when Hanbin sits against the wall of the exit, the clouds seeming to drift by impossibly slow, white swirls stilled in midair above him. Hanbin can still hear the hustle of the city if he listens past the wind, but all the soft noise is comforting because life is never this quiet.

He digs through his backpack and pulls out a small little bottle of pills, pouring all of them into his palms. There’s a voice in the back of his head that echos over and over, resonates with an unusual sense uncertainty. Hanbin’s never been a tentative person, but maybe it’s a different story when he’s staring death in the face.

_Do you really want to die?_

He’s not quite sure, not exactly. But Hanbin thinks it’s fine because he’s never had much to regret—or to even live for—anyway.

 

 

When Hanbin opens his eyes, they’re gummed together and drag with weight like limbs wading through water. There’s an unpleasant taste of copper in his mouth and the only thing he can smell is the pungent scent of rubbing alcohol. His vision blurs but he knows for sure he’s in a place where he’s not familiar, with bleach white walls and a drawn curtain and—

“You’re awake!” Bobby jerks up next to him, clutching his hand like a security blanket, and Hanbin would be startled if he weren’t so out of it. Everything takes a while for him to process, more fatigued than he’s ever been before. But Bobby, with his messy hair and crooked teeth, he’s the one routine thing Hanbin can register. “Fuck, you worried me fucking sick, I—”

Bobby’s expression and voice fall when Hanbin cuts him off and says, syllables slow, “Why am I still alive, though?”

“Hanbin.” Bobby’s tone is thick.

“I’m a failure even when it comes to shit like this, huh?” he heaves, and the sterility of the air makes each breath he takes seem thin. He sits up in his bed, his hand wired to the IV. He’s groggy and disoriented, and now he’s so _angry_. “Fuck, _fuck_ , I—”

“ _Hanbin_ ,” Bobby almost shouts, voice almost breaking, and Hanbin thinks he might even cry. He hushes his voice after a nurse knocks on the door and they ask for another moment. “Please, for fucks sake, don’t say shit like that.”

Hanbin quiets his voice, his palms sweaty, anxiety lacing his thoughts. “Who found me? Was it you?”

“Donghyuk did,” Bobby says, and all the emotions come rushing back at him at once, slapping him right across the face. He doesn’t remember a damn thing but the guilt creeps up again, self-reproach burning its way up his throat. It takes everything Hanbin has to keep it down.

“Donghyuk coincidentally went up to the rooftop of one of the tallest apartment buildings in Seoul?” Hanbin questions him, and Bobby avoids his eyes like he doesn't want to answer. 

“Yeah, he did,” Bobby says, syllables so agonizingly slow, his expression grim. It’s uncharacteristic and unnerving and it only makes Hanbin’s anxiety worse. “If you weren’t up there, he would’ve—”

And Hanbin’s stomach drops, twists and churns and knots in his belly. He takes a deep breath, tries to find his composure. “So that’s why he found me. Great.”

Bobby presses his lips into a line. “At least now you’re both okay.” And there it is, the irritating positivity again. 

“So this is all a good thing then?” Hanbin asks, his words almost lethal with the amount of bitterness they’re laced with.

“No, that’s not what I was trying to say—” 

Hanbin chuckles, and it sounds so fake in his ears, so dishonest. He tries to hide the misery in his voice, but he’s still so exasperated. “Maybe if I picked a better location, we both would’ve gotten what we wanted.”

“ _Don’t fucking say shit like that_ ,” Bobby snaps, repeats it once more, with so much emphasis it sounds like a benediction. “When he called, I genuinely fucking thought you were gonna die.”

Not a word is spoken from either of them and Bobby stares down into his lap. “I did die,” Hanbin breaks the silence, and Bobby’s apprehension shows through the wince of his eyes. For some reason, he seems afraid of what Habin says. “I died and came back.”

“I’m sorry,” is the only response Bobby can form, and Hanbin’s never felt so simultaneously angry and guilty at once.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Hanbin rasps, and Bobby doesn’t seem to hear the quiver in his voice, the uncertainty. He misses all of it, all but the seams of Hanbin’s skin, the cuts and scrapes, the nuts and bolts. All but the pain, because that’s not something he’ll ever be able hide. Bobby clutches onto his hand again, head hanging low as if in apology.

“I do,” he croaks, and Hanbin knows he’s crying. It’s pitiful, which is funny, because Hanbin should be the pitiful one here. Bobby’s always been such a kid. “I have fucking everything to be sorry for.”

“Hey, come closer,” Hanbin says, mildly. Bobby shifts nearer but not enough. “Closer.”

His eyes are already puffy, sniffling when Hanbin snakes a hand around his neck and pulls him in. Tears rub up against his cheeks, wet and gross, but he pays no mind. Vulnerability is a peculiar thing, especially when it’s Bobby’s.

Bobby trembles when he touches him, quivering in his hands. Hanbin kisses him as if Bobby were giving him his oxygen, as if he held all the air left, one bated breath at a time, nice and easy.

 

 

There’s a thousand different thoughts that race through Hanbin’s mind when he goes in for the punch. He’s too angry to feel the pain when it lands square on Bobby’s jaw, but Hanbin’s skin and bones and not a lot of flesh so he _knows_ that it’ll bruise badly.

“What the fuck are you—” Bobby flinches and doesn’t manage to dodge. His eyes are wide and full of panic, and Hanbin wants to smack the dumb look off his face.

“You told him, didn’t you?” Hanbin asks, emphasizes each syllable, hard and clear on his tongue, as he pounds a fist against Bobby’s chest.

“I told who what?” he’s clueless, and it pisses Hanbin off beyond belief that he doesn’t know.

“You told Junhwe to keep a fucking eye on me,” Hanbin says, short-circuited like a bomb seconds away from detonation, voice like a command and words caustic like acid. “You had him fucking follow me.”

Bobby glances away. “That dumbass,” Hanbin hears Bobby mumble under his breath.

“That dumbass? You’re the dumbass here,” Hanbin fumes, and he’s got a hand fisted in Bobby’s shirt and poison on his tongue, spitting every word loud and rough and abrasive. 

But Bobby doesn’t flinch, doesn’t shout back. Hell, he doesn’t even seem the slightest bit fazed when Hanbin hurls an entire storm at him. He replies, with the most irritatingly composed voice, “I was worried about you.”

“ _Fuck your worrying,_ ” Hanbin borderline shouts, and it takes him every ounce of self-control to keep his voice at bay. “Fuck it right up the ass, Kim Jiwon. What the hell makes you think you can tell Junhwe to watch every single move I make?”

“I didn’t know what you might do, Hanbin,” Bobby tries to explain, exasperated as if Hanbin were burrowing and crawling under his skin. “I don’t know why that’s so goddamn hard for you to understand, fuck, I don’t even know why you’re even angry. Listen to me, Hanbin. I was _concerned_.”

“Why, is it because I tried to kill myself? You can’t live without me or something?” Hanbin watches as Bobby goes silent, his eyes in shock. He keeps going. “Because nobody cares about me. Nobody cares about me at all but why’d you go out of your damn way to make everything more difficult, huh?”

“Difficult? How?” Bobby yells this time around. “How’d I make anything worse for you by caring about you? Which I do, by the way.”

“The cops tailed after us, Jiwon,” Hanbin clarifies, emphasizes almost patronizingly as if he were spelling out each word. “Someone reported suspicious behavior. They followed Junhwe and he followed me. I was heading to a client with all the damn drugs and shit on me and we both almost got fucking arrested, and you _know_ the last damn thing I want to lose is my freedom because I don’t have _shit_ left otherwise.”

“Then what are we, huh? Model fucking citizens, right?” Bobby’s smiling now, scrunches his face as if he were scowling. “We’re living life on a fucking tightrope, Hanbin.”

“But because of you two, the fucking police have clued in,” Hanbin continues to argue, absolutely livid, and he doesn’t think there’s a goddamn thing in the world that can pacify him. “What if they decided to come after us, huh? Chanwoo’s still in fucking _high school_. Was your concern worth it then? Why the fuck would you do that?”

“Because I don’t want you to _die_. Why the fuck are you upset over the fact that I didn’t want you to try some shit again, huh?”

Hanbin glares, vengeful. He almost wants to cry, almost, but fights back the tears. He rasps, “Dying is still more fucking liberating than living in a jail cell. We could’ve lost _everything_ , fuck. Why’d you even waste your damn time worrying?”

“Oh yeah, because dying is just an amazing idea, right? Because it’s not like you’re the one holding us all together, and it’s not like we need you around or something,” Bobby spits at him, but the last thing he says is what sticks with Hanbin the most. “Because dying is the _nicest_ goddamn favor you can do for me, right?”

“Fuck you,” Hanbin croaks, his voice quivering, now low and subdued like the drizzle after heavy rain. He takes a few steps back, a moment to breathe and ease a bit. He storms out and the last thing he sees before leaving the room is Bobby’s expression, eyes like a car crash, like the last few seconds before the world ends.

 

 

There’s an unbearable sense of wordlessness and discomfort that hangs thick and heavy between them like molasses. Hanbin stands at the door, leaning his weight against the frame. Bobby doesn’t turn to even acknowledge him, but Hanbin knows the look of hyperawareness when he chews on his fingernails, a shallow attempt at a distraction.

“Listen, I’m sorry about yesterday,” Hanbin says, after swallowing down his pride and mustering up all the courage he’s capable of. Bobby doesn’t respond for a prolonged moment and Hanbin thinks he’ll die from the restless anticipation.

“Don’t be,” is his answer, and Hanbin can tell he’s being dishonest.

He takes a deep breath, tries to keep his nervousness at bay because Hanbin always fights other’s battles, and he’s shit at conflict resolution when the problem’s his own issue to fix. The apology he rehearsed in his head doesn’t sound good enough, isn’t good enough, not at this rate. He caves, “Listen, I lashed out at you for something I shouldn’t have gotten so upset over. I’m in the wrong, so I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” is Bobby’s answer, quick and dismissive like he’s not even trying. It sets Hanbin off.

“That’s it? What’s with the reply?” Hanbin sighs, exasperated. He eyes the back of Bobby’s head as if he could burn through the back of his skull with enough concentration. The dark wisps of his hair spread messy and contrasting with the white of his bedsheets. Bobby seems disinterested and Hanbin grows more frustrated by the second. “Are you still upset with me?”

“You apologized, so no,” Bobby brushes him off but Hanbin’s still convinced otherwise. There are birds chirping outside of the window and the afternoon is displeasingly bright. Bobby takes his time before saying anything else. “Don’t worry about it.”

Hanbin’s dissatisfied with his answer but he doesn’t push any further. “Whatever you say,” he almost whispers, and Bobby stirs in his bed when he hears it.

“I’m sorry too,” Bobby murmurs just as Hanbin gets up to leave. He turns and Hanbin sees the glint of alarm in his eyes, and for just the slightest, most diminutive moment, there’s the shrivel of naivety again, the look Hanbin knows. “I was just—”

“No, you don’t need to say anything, really. I’ll take the blame,” Hanbin assures and stomps his pride into the ground. Bobby seems surprised, and it’s something to witness because Hanbin’s never this relenting. His expression falls black and Hanbin takes a hard glance at his face, sees if he can read him any further. Bobby’s too cryptic, too obscure for Hanbin to deconstruct, to understand. It’s the first time he’s been this closed off with Hanbin, and it’s the worst.

“Okay,” Bobby says, and that’s that.

 

 

They don’t speak for days after that. Hanbin tries to reason with himself, tries to come up with _something_ to mend them back to normal, but there’s nothing for him to say or do. He truly wants to make make things better, he does—for him, for Bobby, for the six of them left—but he doesn’t quite know how.

Bobby sits down next to him one night, strolls in and seats himself right at the edge of Hanbin’s bed, close enough for him to suffocate, for Hanbin to have to veer from. His voice is mild and tame and everything Hanbin’s not when he says a simple, “Hey.”

Hanbin replies back, his hands shaking and his palms sweaty, “Hey.”

There’s always that moment of silence that Hanbin dreads, the one that makes him feel like he’s being stretched thin. Hanbin shrinks smaller and smaller next to him, but Bobby smashes through the silence like it’s nothing. The question comes swiftly, unexpectedly. “Will we be okay?” 

Hanbin takes a minute to think about it because it’s not an easy question to answer, and he can hear every heartbeat thrumming through his ears. “Maybe,” he says, and it’s out of genuine uncertainty because Hanbin doesn’t know at all. He doesn’t know what’ll happen, and that fucking terrifies him.

Bobby shifts closer. “That’s not the answer I was looking for.”

“But there’s not another I can give you,” Hanbin rasps, lets all of his uncertainty seep through, “because I don’t know. I really don’t.”

Bobby’s lips barely curve up into a smile, gentle and reserved, but somehow Hanbin still feels so small next to him. He hates it more than anything. “You might not, but I do,” he says, and Hanbin doesn’t know what he means.

Bobby moves closer, his face hovering in front of Hanbin’s, so uncomfortably near. Their hair catches together with static, shocks of brown falling into Bobby’s eyes. Hanbin’s hyperaware, taken aback when their noses graze and Bobby knocks their foreheads together. He looks at Hanbin as if he were asking for permission.

“You’re the fucking worst,” Hanbin says, weak as if he were holding his breath for an eternity, and Bobby sweeps in and steals every inhale and every exhale he had left. 

The kiss is chaste, soft and reserved, but it lingers. Every muscle in his body goes lax, every nerve like a livewire, every inch of skin flushing. They’ve done this a thousand times but something about this is different, and Hanbin doesn’t know what, but he hates it. Bobby smiles against his lips, all the glitter and all the stars, and Hanbin thinks it’s the most painful thing in the world. Love is the most sinister kind of robbery, he realizes.

Bobby giggles. He tastes like cigarettes and shitty alcohol and regret but Hanbin still can’t help but whine when he licks into his mouth, hot and sloppy and a bit distasteful. It’s messy but it’s _them_ , that’s how they’ve always been.

Hanbin lets him in, kisses him back, as natural as breathing.

 

 

Hanbin doesn’t know if he’ll last the test of time. He doesn’t know if he’ll finally reach that closure he’s always wanted with minimal collateral damage, his heart beating lopsided and weary in his chest, doesn’t know if he can brace through the pain.

It’s rough, yeah, the absolute fucking worst. But when Donghyuk stands at his door, smiling at him more genuinely than he has in weeks, maybe he has hope.

“You good?” Hanbin asks him, doesn’t clarify what he’s referring to, but Donghyuk still knows. He nods and it alleviates Hanbin beyond belief. It doesn’t seem like he’s faking it.

“Yeah, I am. It’s difficult, but I am,” He replies, and Hanbin notices the bags under his eyes, dragging his face down in sleep and lethargy. Somehow, he seems relieved. “What about you?”

“Same,” Hanbin replies, and he doesn’t think he needs any further explanation. Donghyuk smiles the softest smile.

But then Bobby walks in from behind Donghyuk, peering over his shoulder as if he were waiting for the time to jump in and say something, and Hanbin recoils in his line of vision. Bobby gestures him out of the room, and Hanbin has no choice but to give him his attention when Donghyuk nods and leaves. It takes a long, dragged out moment before Bobby actually speaks.

“You sure you’re alright?” is what he asks, short and sweet, and Hanbin scoffs at the question. Bobby frowns at him, eyes bright and awake, locks of chestnut brown falling into his lashes. Hanbin’s so _unnerved_. “You’re still avoiding me.”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Hanbin says mildly, and fuck, for every time he looks at Bobby, he chokes up more and more. He can’t breathe, can’t take the needed gulps of oxygen as if he’s drowning a thousand feet under the surface, his lungs aching like they’re about to implode and he can no longer stand it. Hanbin doesn’t swim, he sinks, and that—that’s the absolute worst thing about it.

He has a hard time forming an additional response. Hanbin thinks, tries so hard, as they sit in gauche stillness. “I don’t know, I just—”

“I just want us to normal again, Hanbin,” Bobby murmurs, his words almost lost between them, muffled by the city outside their walls. Hanbin takes a deep breath.

“Let’s just take it easy, yeah?” Hanbin proposes but Bobby doesn’t say a thing. He’s always been so impossible to read, regardless of how well Hanbin knows him, so untelling, like a powerful gust of wind that carries him because Hanbin can’t keep up on his own. Kim Jiwon, the greatest storm Hanbin’s ever seen, tearing through the sky like the peals of thunder that comes with rain. 

He nods, eventually, and accepts it.

“Okay,” Bobby says with a gentle smile, and fuck, everything about him is so paralyzing, so incapacitating. Hanbin can come up with so many different reasons why he wants to hide, such an elaborate list on why he wants to hole himself away. And yeah, okay—maybe it’s because he’s a _little bit_ in love, but it’s getting too fucking much, too fucking soon.

Hanbin’s hesitant but Bobby grins at him, all teeth and naivety, and Hanbin withers under his light, the sun burning in his chest.

 

 

People are full of contradictions, Hanbin’s learned this the hard way. They love you one day and don’t the next, like a constant on and off switch, like a loop without an exit, a story with no set closure. That’s exactly how they are, and Hanbin hates it.

It really does take time, and they really do take it slow. Bobby doesn’t push himself on Hanbin, doesn’t lean in to kiss him without checking. It’s comfortable distance, and they’re taking their time to heal, all of them are, but the only thing Hanbin’s gotten is a flurry of mixed signals.

Bobby faces him as he sits with his back against the wall, dipping the bed as he pulls his knees up to his chest. The way he looks at Hanbin is placid, eyes glassy under the dim light of the room. His presence is massive, too immense for Hanbin to breathe.

“Listen, I—” Bobby says in the quietest, softest slip of the tongue, trying to collect his words. There’s a long, sustained pause, white noise ringing in Hanbin’s ears, and he can’t bear to look at him. Bobby rubs at his eyes with the backs of his hands. “Just what exactly are we?”

“I’m not sure,” Hanbin replies, and then repeats, “I’m not sure what we are at all.”

“Let’s just go back how it was before, yeah?” The words pain him to hear because he’s not sure, but even now, Hanbin finds solace in the lilt of Bobby’s voice, in the lax, easy rhythm of syllables falling from his lips.

“Yeah,” Hanbin answers after thinking long and hard. Bobby moves off of his bed and walks over to him, traps him in both of his arms. He leans in closer and waits for Hanbin to say something else. His chest burns, but Hanbin swallows the lump in his throat and he says, “Yeah, let’s do that.”

“Can I?” And he gives Hanbin that look, the one he can’t quite seem to place, the one that makes him feel like Bobby has him swimming in deep waters. Hanbin isn’t sure what he wants, and despite his better judgement, he nods. Bobby kisses him, rushes in and steals the oxygen left in his lungs, so quick and swiftly. Hanbin blinks and he’s left breathless.

Hanbin runs a hand along Bobby’s arm, the other grabbing at the collar of his shirt. He can feel his heart jumping and his pulse thrumming in his wrists, and he’s a mix of uncertainty and desperation, so malleable in Bobby’s hold.

Bobby sucks up and down the line of Hanbin’s jaw, gnawing at the skin of his collarbones and up to his ears. Hanbin digs his face into his neck, inhaling as much of him as he can. Bobby smells of cigarettes and cheap cologne but there’s a heavy sense of familiarity that washes over him, a feeling Hanbin’s missed more than anything.

Their foreheads are pressed together, noses grazing, and they sit there in suspended time until Bobby tilts his head a bit to the side. He leans in and kisses Hanbin nice and slow, coaxing his mouth open, the most natural thing in the world.

Bobby smiles against his lips, and maybe it’s the alcohol but time doesn’t just slow, but suspends all around them, every touch searing into his skin. Hanbin pants, syllables catching and tumbling off his tongue when he pulls back for a breath, “ _Fuck_ , I’m, Bobby, this is—”

Bobby grabs him and leads him by the wrist into the bathroom. Hanbin almost trips over his steps, heartbeat louder than anything else that reaches his ears. He’s got all of his defenses lowered when he’s pinned against the wall.

Bobby drops to his knees in front of him and he stumbles back, half in surprise and half in initial obliviousness, and braces himself against the sink. He unzips Hanbin’s jeans with swift fingers, mouthing his cock through the thin fabric of his underwear, and gives the elastic band a pluck before dragging everything down his thighs.

Bobby takes his cock in his hand and starts pumping him off slow, his thumb digging and toying with his slit. Hanbin bucks into his hold, his fingers deft yet calloused, squirming and trembling as he’s being jerked off.

Hanbin trembles, hasn’t gotten off with anything other than his hand, his fingers shoved in his mouth so he can keep quiet. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t want this.

Bobby picks up his pace, wrist flicking on the upstroke and Hanbin’s too far gone to tell him to stop now.

Bobby glances up at him as if he were asking for permission, once more, and Hanbin mouths him a little _yes_. He smiles before giving the crown of Hanbin’s cock the first quick suck, watches his expression like he’s treading dangerous waters. Hanbin whimpers and covers his mouth, biting at the flesh at the back of his hand like he still had something left to be ashamed of.

“Don’t be shy, now,” Bobby tells him and draws concentric circles into his hip with a finger, as if he were trying comfort him, ease him, and leans in to kiss and nip at the skin of his inner thigh. Hanbin hates it, hates him. “Nobody’s around to hear you.”

Bobby runs his tongue down against the underside of his cock and kisses his way back up, dragging a moan out of Hanbin, before swirling his tongue around the head and taking him completely into his mouth.

Bobby’s got a hand wrapped around the base, the other stroking his thigh and holding him in place. Hanbin’s cock hits the back of his throat and he groans, almost cums right there, has to fight the urge back with all the restraint he can muster. Just the image of Bobby with his lips stretched around _his_ cock has him reeling and he’s so _overwhelmed_. Bobby’s got him wrapped around his finger exactly where he wants him.

But it’s the noises that _really_ get to him. The obscene, wet little squelch that fills the silence every time Bobby bobs up and down and sucks at the head, digging his tongue into the slit and Hanbin’s head whips back, hitting against the mirror behind him. He bites down on his lip until he tastes blood.

Hanbin hates himself when he starts move his hips, grabbing onto a bundle of Bobby’s hair and tugging. He hums around him, sending vibrations through his cock and Hanbin lets out the _dirtiest_ whimper that makes him shrink away in embarrassment, makes him want to hide himself away. Away from those eyes.

Bobby pulls off with a pop, precum mixed with saliva dripping from the corner of his lip. Hanbin’s panting into the arm he has over his face. “You’re the prettiest,” he tells him and it only makes Hanbin grip his hair tighter, moan a little louder, his face a little hotter. Hanbin wonders if Bobby’s knees hurt like this on the cold tiles.

There’s coil of heat in his belly, building up and constricting. Bobby’s bobbing his head at a faster pace, his jaw going slack as he lets Hanbin shove his cock down the line of his throat. He eases on the suction, and all it is now is just a hot, wet slide and Hanbin _can’t fucking take this_.

Hanbin quivers, letting out these small, almost inaudible noises from the back of his throat, Bobby’s name silent on his tongue. He tries to quiet himself down and prays that Bobby doesn't hear, but he does. He definitely does.

“Ah, I’m gonna—” Hanbin whimpers, breath hitching as he cums. Bobby tries to swallow all of it but pulls back too soon, little drops of white landing on his cheek. He wipes it off with the back of his hand.

Bobby sits back on his heels, winded, just as breathless as Hanbin is. It sends shivers down his spine when Bobby looks up at him through his eyelashes, letting him know he’s being watched.

Even like this, with Bobby’s head leaning up against the inside of his thigh, yielding, Hanbin still somehow feels so, so small.

 

 

The smoke from Bobby’s cigarette rises in a plume of pale gray above them, the night sky and all its stars framing him in the most serene picture. There’s something so significant about him that Hanbin’s never noticed before, artistic almost, captured in motion like a scene in a movie. Except right now, it’s real and raw and unscripted and Hanbin feels everything rush at him at once.

“What’re you looking at?” Bobby asks him and he snaps out of his trance. It catches him off guard and he’s embarrassingly startled.

“Nothing,” Hanbin answers, beats too quickly to pass off as such. _Just you_ , says the back of Hanbin’s mind. He feels so slight when standing next to Bobby, standing next to the brightest thing in his universe.

“Nothing, huh? Could’ve sworn I caught you staring,” Bobby teases, and Hanbin catches the way he smiles at him from the corner of his eye. Bobby’s eyes crinkle at the corners and Hanbin swears he sees the sun.

“You’re the last thing I’d bother to stare at,” Hanbin says, his gaze flitting away, and there’s a soft laugh that rings in his ears with utmost clarity. What a fucking lie.

“Oh really?” Bobby questions, takes it in stride as he always does, thin wisps of white gushing from his teeth. Hanbin laments how easily Bobby sees right through him.

“Yes really,” Hanbin tells him, and he shifts nearer until he’s got Hanbin backed up to the ledge. Bobby’s got an arm on either side of him, trapping him in.

Hanbin swallows the lump in his throat and Bobby takes a step back, takes another drag, and leans in closer again until their noses graze. Hanbin’s got nothing to say, too taken back to do anything when Bobby licks at the seam of his lips and coaxes them apart. Hanbin’s heart pounds fists against his ribcage, but they ease into it, and it pisses Hanbin off how Bobby makes it seem like nothing. Their mouths are sloppy but downtempo, and smoke drifts in between them and spills over at the edges. Hanbin falls into the rhythm, welcomes it completely, takes Bobby’s exhale as an inhale, taking it like oxygen.

“I don’t believe you,” Bobby says, and Hanbin’s breathless and pliant in his arms, and fuck, he just wants to just _melt_. “I’ve heard shit like this a thousand times before.”

“I hate you,” Hanbin tells him with zero bite, zero sincerity, shrinks under his gaze, small and diminutive. “You’re the fucking worst.”

“No you don’t. You fucking love me,” he teases, his grin bright. Hanbin hates it, hates everything about it because everything about him is scathing, igniting like the carbon that burns in stars, something untouchable. The most beautiful rapture Hanbin’s ever seen.

And _fuck_ , it’s true, all of it is. There’s a pang in Hanbin’s chest, each word resonating louder than anything his ears could ever register, every breath snatched away from him in armed robbery. Bobby’s got him caught, and each word _hurts_ , tears Hanbin apart. His heart’s in his throat and there’s not a thing he can manage to say.

“Tonight’s comforting, isn’t it?” Bobby drops it as if it’s nothing, and maybe Hanbin wants to punch him, but he’s got a brightness to his voice that’s so awfully familiar. He speaks as if he’s got stars falling from his lips and the entire sky reflected in his eyes, like the hopes and the dreams and the twinkle of naivety Hanbin’s lost and could never salvage.

 _Youth_ , that’s what it is. He’s found it again in the form of a single person, a smaller than life soul with larger than life ambitions. And yeah, maybe he’s just a giant convolution of bruised knuckles and recklessness and cheeky smiles and teeth, but nobody comes to Hanbin as more familiar.

“Maybe Jinhwan wasn’t exactly right for once,” Hanbin whispers to himself, impossibly quiet, almost as if someone else were listening. Bobby turns to look at him and knits his brows together like he said something strange. It’s terrifying how enormous Bobby’s presence is next to him.

“About what?” he asks, genuinely curious because Jinhwan’s never wrong. Hanbin leans himself over the ledge, his forearms bracing him against the concrete. The wind blows hair out of both of their eyes, and Hanbin smiles just as Bobby does.

“We really aren’t that strange of a pair.”

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to come and cry with me!!  
> [tumblr](http://junghwe.tumblr.com/) / [twitter](https://twitter.com/switchbobby)


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